Part One: An Introduction to the 4th House, Fourth House Astrology Series

The fourth house is the House where we find our roots and comfort. It is the house of family, extended family, family resources, our past and our future, and it represents long term memory.

The fourth house is also the house of our childhood and our parents childhood and so-on. It represents the circle of life and size. It’s the house of what makes us into who we are as adults and it’s our past that we like to keep private. This is where we can find “Skeletons in the closet“. It represents resources used to rear us. Often it is where we blend into what everyone else wants of us. We are not heard or recognized as individuals who have separate and distinct aspirations. This is the house of family, extended family, and family we don’t know about. This is the House of “non-work” as we develop our psyche and make choices about what we want to become or settle into. It’s a water house that deals with the mother, emotions, instinct, food, housing, and sustenance — basic needs!

Within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs the 4th house covers Physiological, Safety, and part of one’s Love/Belonging needs. This is a serious house dealing with security, responsibilities, and emotional well-being.

The 4th house is where we get nurtured so that we can become a success out in the big and difficult world (10th house). This house shows how we were nurtured until our early 20’s (3rd Saturn Square & Uranus Squares Saturn). Once we have proven our success away from our early conditions and family support or non-support, we go back to become an elder or mentor after we have self-acutalized and received public recognition in the 10th house. This happens around 60 years old and this is when you make way and support the 20, 30, and 40’s in leaving their legacy and imprint on the world.

Facts about the 4th House.

Ruled by Moon (Cancer). An Angular house.

House Axis: 4 /10 Polarity

Aspect / Planet – Sign: (Cancer) Moon Opposition Saturn (Capricorn)

The JMAD Swap: Moon Capricorn / Saturn Cancer. Our parents or male/female care-givers. Cancer is in Sextile with Virgo (the 6th house) and Taurus (2nd house); therefore, these houses stimulate and piggy-back off of each other. The 4th house is also in harmony (trine) with the 12th and 8th house which completes the primary “internal and psychological” themes in a natives life.

Everyone has 4th house themes. This is the House of Ancestry (past) or when house ownership is taken, it can be viewed asThe House of Nurture (present).

4th House: Don’t see me and what was created before me. (behind closed doors) Tenth House: See me and what I have created. (an open door)

House Themes: Our Roots, Family & Parents or Care-takers, Heritage, Beginning and End of Life, Housing & Land or Farming, Food & Produce, Resources & Resourcefulness, Archetypes & the Universe

Personal note: I’m a psychic and occultist, by trade (Scorpio planet in the 10th). My mother is a water sign and was involved with tarot and the occult and I come from a long line of occultists on my mother’s side who practiced in secret. My father is of an earthy and logical temperament with a conservative heritage who is /was focused on public / career success. He was / is a business man and I went to school for business. My parents split when I was young so I was reared mainly by my father (unusual for the times). I have Saturn in the 4th — Saturn co-rules Aquarius! If it were not for my father, I wouldn’t have turned my occult abilities into a business. And if it weren’t for my mother, I wouldn’t have had the psychic DNA in my blood. The 4th house contains information about both of your parents, as does the 10th. As a side-note, I was raised on a farm for a good number of years and this very much relates to my earthy Saturn in the 4th placement. 😀

4th House Themes

House of Our Roots: heritage, ancestry, where we came from. What we know about our roots. What is hidden about our roots when we are young. What we find out about our roots when we are much older. What we own or is passed on to us as it relates to the family, such as photos, heirlooms, and real estate. Burial grounds or places where the native can find relics of the past or where their relics will be stored.

House of Family & Care-takers: The parents but specifically the Mother or Nurturer and what she / they pass on to you. The quality of care received. The size of the family and the reason for the size. How you were nurtured. The first house is nature and 4th house is nurture. The role your father played in the home. The kind of family you have. Siblings whom one is not close with due to adoption, out of wedlock birth, previous marriage / family of parents and their emotional and psychological temperament as related to the native’s parents (siblings are in the 3rd). Siblings whom one does not know.

House of Beginning & End: Childhood and old age. How we begin our lives and how our lives end. Before 20 and after 60. The quality of our life when we are young and much older.

House of Housing& Land (Farming, Water, What’s at or below the horizon): The quality, size, and appearance of one’s parental home and what one might possess in adulthood. The type of building one spends most of their time in. What the land looks like in the area of one’s home.

House of Food & Produce: Food secured. How one purchases their food and what one eats. Why the native eats emotionally. The types of foods we ate and will get to eat.

House of Resources & Resourcefulness: How your family and how you cope when in crisis. The resources available to you to provide comfort and sustenance. How resources are used.

House of Archetypes & the Universe: What we do not know but what is inherently known about all there is to know. The archetypes we are most exposed to when developing and during retirement.

More Abella "Jucy" Arthur

Abella "Jucy" Arthur has contributed 112 posts in this blog.

Let me provide some insights in your own life. And if you are interested in learning astrology, numerology, or tarot from a Jupiter-Uranus Libra in the 9th teacher, I'd love to be your guide, and provide a dynamic consultation. www.YOURWisdomGuide.com

Thanks so much for this article and I’m definitely looking forward to the other planned articles in this series. This house along with the 8th and 12th houses have been the most difficult for me to understand but I’m thinking are the most important in determining who I am. My Sun is in the 8th, Moon is in the 12th.

As for my 4th house it is empty with Sagittarius in the cusp. It’s ruler is in the 10th in Gemini. One would think I have many brothers and sisters, but that is not the case as I’m an only child. My parents families are not that big compared to other families back in that time (6 including Mom, 8 including Dad). Jupiter is at the apex of a t-square with Uranus/Pluto in Virgo retro tightly conjunct in the 1st opposing Mercury retro/Saturn/Chiron in Pisces tightly conjunct in the 7th. I’ve never grasped the only child part in my chart especially with Sagittarius on the 4th but as I typed I think that my be the Mercury/Saturn conjunction that indicates this. However, I tend to refer to people that I’ve gotten somewhat close to as Sis or Bro, and I feel we are all sisters and brothers regardless of race or anything else, so in that way I do have a big family.

I’ve been living in the city of my parents birth for almost 18 years now and home that I purchased is small but has a large lot which contributes an expansive feeling. It’s funny that this city is crosses my Sun/Jupiter, Sun/Pluto line according to the Astroclick Travel map. Pluto is transiting and had been for a very long time through my 4th so my experience of the past is being changed…never to be the same. Destructive family dynamics and personality issues that were overlooked and celebrated in the past when the current economic stresses were not present have come to the forefront. Though it still has been a expansive, enlightening, transforming experience.

I think that the most interesting thing about the 4th house vibration is the image the 4th house conjures for me: The ground where one puts up a flag post.

I don’t know why I think that this image is about the 4th house, but I got the impression that it was like, this ground, the stability of this ground (4th house) makes the “flag post” holding the “flag” or “banner” (10th house) seen clearly. I know it may seem esoteric and kind of soft in comparison to concrete “fact” Virgo loves to work with, but feel me out 😉

The example I recall in the past were that actors often had full 4th houses.. that they developed their skills behind closed doors. Although I myself am not any kind of actor, I’m a Gemini ASC with Mercury in Gemini conjunct the ASC in the 12th house, and my 4th house ruler ALSO Mercury (and if you are correct concerning Vesta, Vesta sextile Mercury in Aries in the 11th house ;))

The idea of a sort of undermining of the 10th house is quite interesting since I have Jupiter in the early part of Virgo, conjunct the IC from the 3rd house, and then Moon and Pluto in conjunction in the 4th a little later in Virgo, and finally Uranus (9th house ruler) also in the 4th (in Virgo) conjunct Pallas Athena (and Asteroid Prometheus which do have a symbolic relationship, not only to each other but to personal symbolism)

I also take note that my outward success has been undermined by some missing opportunities as well as instability of my early home environment, absent father and dysfunctional family; but its not all “bad”, but sometimes it was very hurtful.

I didn’t graduate school in the traditional way, and yet went on to university without the formal education that was required. I am still uncertain about what “success” is, and how to acquire it, but my deeper senses, considering my natal 10th house ruler being Neptune and this is in 6th house and Scorpio gives me a feeling that with its aspects (quintile Moon in the 4th) (Neptune as the apex point of one yod, quincux both Saturn/Vesta and Mercury/Black Moon Lilith) whatever this “fate” is it seems to be pointing strongly to a Neptune vibration, 12th/6th house and even 11th house vibration, but inverted, like Neptune doesn’t act as it should in the 6th, and Mercury doesn’t act as it should in the 12th.

Unemployment is definately a part of it, as well as Art, and Music, film and singing, mysticism and astrology… all small attempts to make way in a confused world I understand very little of, possibly.

I get the feeling it only seems more interesting than it really IS. I think that some of the things that comes from description of the 4th house, and its antithesis the 10th.. perhaps some could say “stark reality of the inner world/early world/later years” vs “imagining success/projected success/unrealistic success”?

Certainly addiction played a roll with my parents, I must add, but also dancing and music. (My mother was a go-go dancer at the Peppermint Lounge in NYC, sounds kind of Neptunian and glamorous to me!) Perhaps I should avoid the10th house and just focus on the 4th, as it is easier to understand…

Perhaps I should continue when Mercury is no longer retrograde… its sort of feeling soft and hazy… and I can’t for the life of me get everything I want said as well as I know I can say it.

Be well and thanks for your twitter feeds.. I really enjoy reading them, and following the links, they have been very good reading over my holidays!